

First published in 1967, just months after the completion of Chichester's historic journey, Gipsy Moth Circles the World was an instant international best-seller. This handsome first volume in The Sailor's Classics series restores in its entirety for a new generation of readers Francis Chichester's extraordinarily candid personal account of his adventure. The story of how the sixty-five-year-old navigator single-handedly circumnavigated the globe, the whole way battling hostile seas as well as his boat's numerous design flaws, is a tale of superhuman tenacity and endurance to be read and reread by sailors and armchair adventurers alike.

Among the handful of such tales to emerge in the twentieth century, one of the most enduring surely must be Sir Francis Chichester's account of his solitary, nine-month journey around the world in his 53-foot ketch Gipsy Moth IV. And from time immemorial, few narrative genres have had the power to so stir the emotions or captivate the imagination as the true account of a lone adventurer's triumph over the titanic forces of nature. The delight in stories well told is as intrinsic to who we are as a species as toolmaking or song. "Sir Francis Chichester has become a genuine hero-perhaps the greatest of the adventurers of his time."- Time
